24 Rules For Being A Gentleman In 2014

#24. Be compassionate, and know that you are allowed to experience the full range of human emotion. Where the gentleman of our grandparents’ generation might have prided himself on keeping all of his feelings in check for fear of seeming ‘feminine,’ a real gentleman knows that the best thing about him is his ability to be kind and empathetic. Everything else — yes, even the suit — is just icing on the cake.

The Age of the Gentleman — that semi-imaginary time we all have in our heads where men you actually wanted to sleep with wore fedoras and treated ladies like ladies — might be over, but there’s no reason it can’t come back next year. We just need to set up a few ground rules for being a modern Cary Grant/Paul Newman/Ken Cosgrove. We’ll all be drinking scotch and wearing linen suits again in no time.

1. Have a signature drink that you both can make at home after a long day’s work, and order with effortless swag at any bar you happen to be in. (This means no complicated ingredients and easy substitutes. If it’s a whiskey soda, so be it.)

2. Keep all negative social media activities to a minimum, because no gentleman engages in things like Twitter fights or passive-aggressive Facebook statuses. It’s just not classy.